Barbara Loe Fisher is co-founder and president of the National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC). She is the co-author of DPT: A Shot in the Dark (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1985; Warner 1986; Avery 1991); author of The Consumer's Guide to Childhood Vaccines (NVIC 1997); editor of the bi-weekly NVIC Vaccine E-News and a blogger at www.vaccineawakening.blogspot.com

During the early 1980's, she helped launch a grassroots movement to bring the issue of vaccine safety to public attention, including leading demonstrations at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and the White House in 1986. Her book, DPT: A Shot in the Dark, which she co-authored with Harris Coulter, Ph.D., was the first major, well documented critique of America's mass vaccination system calling for safety reforms and the right to informed consent to vaccination.

She served on the National Vaccine Advisory Committee (1988-1991); the Institute of Medicine Vaccine Safety Forum (1995-1998) where she has helped to coordinate five public workshops on vaccine safety issues; the FDA Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (1999-2003); the Vaccine Policy Analysis Collaborative (2002-2005) and is a member of the Consumer’s United for Evidence-Based Healthcare, Cochrane Collaboration – U.S. She has represented health care consumers at many scientific conferences, government meetings and legislative hearings and is a featured speaker at health care conferences in the U.S., Canada and Europe. As NVIC's public spokesperson, she has contributed to numerous newspaper and magazine articles about vaccine safety and appears on national radio and television programs discussing vaccines and diseases and advocating informed consent to vaccination.

The mother of three children, her oldest son was left with multiple learning disabilities and attention deficit disorder after a severe reaction to his fourth DPT shot in 1980 when he was two and a half years old.

Complete Barbara Loe Fisher Biography